Xbox One Reveal

[Mamoulian War]

 

 

3) In this generation of consoles we got to play almost everything worthwhile on the PC. The new generation is made on a pc friendly architecture that is going to drive up the likelihood of any successful game getting a port by about 100%. In fact, most games will probably be multiplatform, even more than they are now.

 

You still won't see Sony titles on PC. So essentially the status quo will be the same.

 

 

That may be the case, but the PS2 years where Sony was drowning in must play exclusives is long gone. The PS3 exclusives list isn't all that long...

 

 

That depends on what kind of games are you playing. I got 28 PS3 games and 21 of them are PS3 excluives, and I can assure you that with my gaming preferences all of these games, not only the exclusives are a must play, so I got my money spent on the console worth... And I expect the same with PS4...

 

And because of my much shorter gaming time nowadays, It will take for me more than year to finish all of these 28 games I have.

 

Last time I turned on my PC for gaming was this spring, when I finally got my hands on Alpha Protocol, and next time I turn the PC for gaming will be, when Wasteland 2 will be released...

 

And I am in the same group as alan, that I can't bother with moving my PC to the living room and connect it to my 46" TV screen, because I already have all of the ports except one HDMI used for my other multimedia entertainment platforms. Best place for my PC is on my desk with 22" monitor attached...

[ManifestedISO]

 

Console games are made by the lowest common denominator, in other words the hardware limitations of the XBOne are the ones you want to look at. 

 

I know nothing about game software development, but I suspect they don't aim for the lowest minimum requirement across multiple platforms. Surely there must be a customization process. Skyrim was unplayable on PS3 for many, yet most Xbox 360 owners encountered a much smaller litany of quest-breaking bugs, corrupted/missing saves, etc. 

 

 

 

 

  

[ManifestedISO]

 

Do you happen to know if offloading the processes onto the GPU requires developer work or not?

 

 

No, I don't. I can only find generalized statements. Mark Cerny from Sony has said that "time to triangle," or the time it takes a developer to achieve a working engine, is down from 6-12 months on PS3, to only 1-2 months for PS4. Surely that implies minimal, if any, developer work differentiating CPU/GPU processes in hardware.  

[AwesomeOcelot]

Thankfully, it is not average. The GPU of the PS4 will have access to the 8GB of system memory--the super-fast GDDR5 RAM--at the same time as the PS4's CPU, unlike the same components in a PC. The RAM in your PC is slower DDR3, unavailable to your GPU, which itself has only 2GB of VRAM. The potential for future-proofing the console's performance is very exciting. And it will be upgradeable, at least the hard drive, possibly with a sizzlingly-quick solid-state drive.

Sharing RAM between GPU and CPU probably won't make much difference, and GDDR5 won't make a difference to general computing. The PC with GDDR5 for GPU and DDR3 for CPU is the best price per performance setup, there's already cards with 3 and 4GB of GDDR5, more than will probably be available to developers for PS4 anyway. PC is also moving to DDR4 and GDDR6 in 2014, so PC will soon move on to bigger and better.

 

If the HDD is upgradable in the PS4 I don't see why they wouldn't make it compatible with SSD but I doubt they'll ever ship with them.

 

 

 

Console games are made by the lowest common denominator, in other words the hardware limitations of the XBOne are the ones you want to look at.

 

I know nothing about game software development, but I suspect they don't aim for the lowest minimum requirement across multiple platforms. Surely there must be a customization process. Skyrim was unplayable on PS3 for many, yet most Xbox 360 owners encountered a much smaller litany of quest-breaking bugs, corrupted/missing saves, etc.

 

Depends what you're talking about. Assets, e.g. texture quality has been aimed at the lowest, and with the Xbox1-80 being 5GB of available for game RAM and lower bandwidth compared to PS4 let alone PC, you will probably see games aimed at that with the potential for some games to release "ultra" textures for PC (although that hasn't been often). Tweaking the graphics with extra particle effects and shaders, and even background models has gone on and probably will go on. Also with the next gen using the same architecture as PC, with CPU and GPU from the same family as PC hardware, less work will go into differentiating the ports because less will have to specifically target and be written for each platform.

[ManifestedISO]

Sharing RAM between GPU and CPU probably won't make much difference

 

I see few are reading the articles I quote. It won't be simple simultaneous read/write. It says the GPU will also be used as a resource for compute calculations, including ray tracing for audio, texture decompression, physics and particle simulation, collision detection, AI, and world simulation. Dismissing GDDR5 as EOL already is just silly.   

[AwesomeOcelot]

 

Sharing RAM between GPU and CPU probably won't make much difference

 

I see few are reading the articles I quote. It won't be simple simultaneous read/write. It says the GPU will also be used as a resource for compute calculations, including ray tracing for audio, texture decompression, physics and particle simulation, collision detection, AI, and world simulation. Dismissing GDDR5 as EOL already is just silly.

 

The GPU isn't that great, unless they've hidden an extra one in there running physics, collision detection, particle simulation, and AI isn't going to be that impressive. The only reason they've got this capability is because the CPU is not up to much.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Getting all excited on the potential of the hardware isn't a bad thing but hardware really doesn't mean anything in the long run. The PS3 had the best hardware and it could be called the failure of its generation comparatively speaking. Either the Gamecube or the original XBOX (I can't remember which) had the best hardware of their generation and the PS2 left them in the dust.

 

We've already seen that there won't be a great leap in graphics quality. From this point onwards its going to be a slow upwards climb, that is probably nearer to its peak than we imagine. There are only few AAA projects pushing those boundaries and their number isn't climbing - but development costs are.

 

Hoping for better AI is probably pointless as well. There aren't many competent AI programmers in the industry and it has never been the focus of any game company, ever - regardless of what their marketing says. As soon as the AI is serviceable (and much of the time, even before that) games are shoved out of the door.

 

I'm not all that interested in hardware anyway. Its all about games and so far, all three major players have failed to announce groundbreaking exclusives.

[alanschu]

I'm not much of an ultra technical person anymore.  How, specifically, does the architecture differ in terms of the ability to read/write to the unified memory pool for the PS4 compared to, say, the XBox 360?

Edited July 4, 2013 by alanschu

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

3) In this generation of consoles we got to play almost everything worthwhile on the PC. The new generation is made on a pc friendly architecture that is going to drive up the likelihood of any successful game getting a port by about 100%. In fact, most games will probably be multiplatform, even more than they are now.

 

You still won't see Sony titles on PC. So essentially the status quo will be the same.

 

 

Well here is a list of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment#Software_development_studios. Now I'll agree that some titles are indispensable to certain genres (like Gran Turismo in racing) and some of the other studios are very popular - but honestly, the list isn't all that long. These are the only studios (practically) guaranteed not to make ports. Most others will make multiplatform titles because that's a very sensible business decision.

 

One of my favorite games, SoC is a PS2 exclusive, so I recognize that Sony can sometimes offer something other competitors cannot, more often than MS surely. But its shrunk from the glory days of PS2.

[entrerix]

 

I'm not all that interested in hardware anyway. Its all about games and so far, all three major players have failed to announce groundbreaking exclusives.

 

 

this.  i'll buy any reasonably priced system so long as it has the games

[alanschu]

That's ultimately what matters, and ultimately, why I feel consoles will maintain the bulk of gamers, regardless of the superiority I feel PC must have.

[Zoraptor]

I'm less than convinced that the PS4 will be some sort of revolutionary system in terms of performance. It'll be better than the on3 pretty much inevitably since the on3's components are worse and PS4 will cost less, but things like improvements in development time are in comparison to the- frankly- dreadful and overcomplicated PS3/Cell system, not in comparison to competitors. And having access to unified memory will have a limited effect as that does not improve the underlying horsepower, which is decent enough and better than the on3, but, well it's already substantially worse than PC options, albeit currently quite expensive PC options. But, if I were looking at getting a next gen console there would be only one option and it wouldn't be the One

 

Mind you, given the similarities to PC I can see Sony doing a bit more of the timed exclusive then release on PC, potentially. Cell made that a difficult proposition for PS3 era games but given it's AMD/ AMD now it would be practical- if they wanted to.

 

I'm not much of an ultra technical person anymore.  How, specifically, does the architecture differ in terms of the ability to read/write to the unified memory pool for the PS4 compared to, say, the XBox 360?

Is much more is known of the technical aspects beyond the supposed 3/5 GB split in the on3 for the win8/ gaming OS's, given neither is released yet? I don't think Sony has said anything about how it's handling such things, yet.

 

Otherwise there's the basic DDR3 vs DDR5 difference and latency vs bandwidth advantage issues, but that's a well known difference.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Zoraptor

[alanschu]

 

 

Is much more is known of the technical aspects beyond the supposed 3/5 GB split in the on3 for the win8/ gaming OS's, given neither is released yet? I don't think Sony has said anything about how it's handling such things, yet.

 

Otherwise there's the basic DDR3 vs DDR5 difference and latency vs bandwidth advantage issues, but that's a well known difference.

 

I honestly don't know (my question was genuine).

 

For the PS4, it is a novel thing as the PS3 did not have unified memory.  The 360, however, does.  I'm curious if there's any knowledge that that PS4 does it in a more magical way than the 360 does, as it was still possible to get the GPU on the 360 to do "non graphics tasks" as well.  It was possible on the PS3 too, although much more complicated, requiring some creative memory work.

[AwesomeOcelot]

The PS3 had the best hardware and it could be called the failure of its generation comparatively speaking. Either the Gamecube or the original XBOX (I can't remember which) had the best hardware of their generation and the PS2 left them in the dust.

I don't think the PS3 had the best hardware, it certainly made the most dubious claims about its harware, but then Sony have a history of this. The original Xbox was clearly more powerful than the Gamecube, Microsoft threw money at it to get its foot in the door.

 

We've already seen that there won't be a great leap in graphics quality. From this point onwards its going to be a slow upwards climb, that is probably nearer to its peak than we imagine. There are only few AAA projects pushing those boundaries and their number isn't climbing - but development costs are.

You're right about the developers so far, but I'm hoping we haven't seen all that's coming, the launch line up is always underwhelming. We are getting to a point where publishers aren't willing to fund the teams to create better and better assets. Unless people start developing procedurally created assets that look great then the higher the fidelity the more work for the artists, animators, and sound engineers.

 

Compared to PC there isn't going to be a step up, as there wasn't last generation. The leap from sometimes 720p (sometimes 720x480) to 1080p is a big step. From having 256MB or less for textures to up to 2-3GB is going to be huge, as texture art can make the biggest difference in terms of how good a game looks, and previous generations of consoles had way too little (Sony almost made the same mistake again). The PS4 has got a GPU that's equivalent to a $250 PC GPU released last year, that's a lot more power than the 8 year old GPU in the Xbox360.

[licketysplit]

That's ultimately what matters, and ultimately, why I feel consoles will maintain the bulk of gamers, regardless of the superiority I feel PC must have.

 

It's not just the superiority of PC as a platform, it's that PC is a more progressive market, especially with the onset of digital distribution, something consoles have been woefully slow to embrace. Everyone, from developers to customers, have more options on PC. It's the console business models that are outdated, out moded, and not really good for the industry as a whole. 

[greylord]

 

That's ultimately what matters, and ultimately, why I feel consoles will maintain the bulk of gamers, regardless of the superiority I feel PC must have.

 

It's not just the superiority of PC as a platform, it's that PC is a more progressive market, especially with the onset of digital distribution, something consoles have been woefully slow to embrace. Everyone, from developers to customers, have more options on PC. It's the console business models that are outdated, out moded, and not really good for the industry as a whole. 

 

 

Well, Microsoft wanted to embrace it fully...the only problem is that all those people that didn't migrate to it on PC...and are playing consoles...sort of threw a hissy fit in regards to it...

 

For some reason it's not that Console makers don't want to migrate (at least MS seems to want to) it's that the customers don't want to.

 

which could begger the question...is the console business model really outdated and outmoded yet...or not?

[Drowsy Emperor]

Well they did build up a consumer habit of buying consoles as the toys on which to play their games. For them to give up on console development either the consumers lose interest or the major companies decide its time to give up the business. Neither is likely to happen as even through this economic downturn the industry is still growing.

 

The PC's "problem" is that it has no brand identity as a gaming platform. Its not that shiny box the kids talk about, that you can see on the TV, brag about. Its just a dull collection of lookalike parts that are too technical for most people to understand (if they even cared to). People have a fairly clear idea that consoles = games, but most of them have no idea that you can use a PC as a gaming platform, or how huge its catalog of games is.

 

So I'm not trying to discuss platform superiority from a perspective that everyone can relate to. That's pointless, the PC isn't even perceived as a choice in the mind of most buyers. Its not sitting on the shelf in a shop with its neat, self contained package, surrounded by games screaming - YOU CAN PLAY THIS IF YOU BUY ME. The rare interested noob has to jump through the hoops of actually deciding what PC to buy, understanding the headache inducing difference between configurations, the inevitable troubleshooting that arises when you put an inexperienced user behind a complex machine etc. etc.

[Nepenthe]

 

That's ultimately what matters, and ultimately, why I feel consoles will maintain the bulk of gamers, regardless of the superiority I feel PC must have.

 

It's not just the superiority of PC as a platform, it's that PC is a more progressive market, especially with the onset of digital distribution, something consoles have been woefully slow to embrace. Everyone, from developers to customers, have more options on PC. It's the console business models that are outdated, out moded, and not really good for the industry as a whole. 

 

 

Outmoded maybe, but I have serious doubts that the current freemium/steam sale trends are actually good for the industry in any sense.

[licketysplit]

 

 

That's ultimately what matters, and ultimately, why I feel consoles will maintain the bulk of gamers, regardless of the superiority I feel PC must have.

 

It's not just the superiority of PC as a platform, it's that PC is a more progressive market, especially with the onset of digital distribution, something consoles have been woefully slow to embrace. Everyone, from developers to customers, have more options on PC. It's the console business models that are outdated, out moded, and not really good for the industry as a whole. 

 

 

Outmoded maybe, but I have serious doubts that the current freemium/steam sale trends are actually good for the industry in any sense.

 

 

Why not?

[Nepenthe]

Because I agree with the people who say that it cheapens the product, just participating in this forum has been enough to convince me of it.

[alanschu]

It's great for consumers.

 

I actually don't know if it's good/bad for developers.  I have heard arguments on both sides.  I think it's great for smaller developers (well, the digital platform in general).  I'm curious if there were any changes in purchasing habits for games, because I know some people that have pretty much just sworn off ever buying anything on Day One ever again, and just waiting for steam sales.  This would be a case where profits would actually decline, if the person normally would have bought earlier just to ensure picking up the product.  Whether or not this outweighs the increased numbers is completely oblivious to me, though I can see the logic that it may make economies of scale that much more important.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Steam sales are pretty unreliable. There's no guarantee the particular game you want will be on sale. Its likely, but not certain. I imagine that makes quite a difference when you're dying to play a certain game.

 

I never buy anything on day one, pre-order or kickstart anything  - and the games that I would buy (like say Witcher 3) I'm better off waiting for the enhanced edition/patches. Its just not worth buying a game only to discover it'll need patches to work as you expect it to. Prices tend to drop fast (except on Blizzard games) so its not much of a wait.

I'm likely to pay the full price for a retail collectors edition of a game I desire, if the package is sufficiently appealing.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I just buy more games, take more chances, I don't think deep sales negatively effect anything, it certainly increases revenue, that has to be good for developers. I don't buy games day one, never have, I preordered Bioshock: Infinite because it came with The Darkness 2 and X-COM: Enemy Unknown, that was a pretty good deal on GMG, and I have used KickStarter but that's to support independent development and developers I like.

 

Microsoft were not planning anything that looked remotely like PC. They were going to have daily check-in DRM, region locking, and a digital distribution monopoly that wasn't going to have the same sales and pricing as PC.

[Drowsy Emperor]

I just buy more games, take more chances, I don't think deep sales negatively effect anything, it certainly increases revenue, that has to be good for developers. I don't buy games day one, never have, I preordered Bioshock: Infinite because it came with The Darkness 2 and X-COM: Enemy Unknown, that was a pretty good deal on GMG, and I have used KickStarter but that's to support independent development and developers I like.

 

Microsoft were not planning anything that looked remotely like PC. They were going to have daily check-in DRM, region locking, and a digital distribution monopoly that wasn't going to have the same sales and pricing as PC.

 

This is also true. With a good sale I can be tempted to buy a game I'd otherwise dismiss.

[mkreku]

I very rarely buy full-priced games. But it has nothing to do with Steam sales or Steam at all. I've just never thought most games were worth the cost, at least in Sweden.

 

The few exceptions are almost always games I am certain I will like, for example Piranha Bytes games and the GTA's (and now Borderlands and Far Cry too). Of course, after the snorefest that was GTA 4 and the mediocre effort that was Risen 2, not even they are guaranteed a purchase from me anymore.

 

I also wish the publishers would hire more modern economists. I mean, it just feels like their entire business model has not really changed since the nineties, while the market has changed beyond recognition. It used to be that only the full price games were quality games and anything that cost less sucked (back in the Commodore 64 and Spectrum days). Nowadays it's almost the complete opposite! So called AAA games very rarely do anything for me while I am looking forward to much more modest titles like Grim Dawn and the likes.

 

The biggest difference is that if I'm on the fence about a game, I am ten times more likely to buy it if it's 20€ than if it's 40-60€. Thus, if other people are anything like me, the loss in short term profit is offset by us impulse buyers. It just must be better to get those 20€ than nothing at all.